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I live in a city which just started enforcing restrictions on short term rentals, and hosts are limited to one reservation per night (I can keep both my room listings active, but can only have one short term booking per night, so most of the time one of my rooms is vacant).
I have been leaving both rooms listed but when one is booked, I manually set a rule for the unbooked room to 31 day minimum for the days the other is rented (I do this under the “seasonal requirements” setting in the trip length menu). Today I got an inquiry that somehow slipped through my rules, and I’m wondering if I set my rules up wrong? (The same custom rule set also appears in my calendar view).
For example, I currently have a reservation from 12/29-1/2. So the second room I changed the minimum stay between 12/29-1/2 to be 31 days. I assumed this would mean that any booking that includes these days would have to be 31 days minimum, no matter what the start date is. However, today I got an inquiry for 12/27-1/2, and if I accepted it I would be in violation of the city laws. I tested my listing on a private browser and the 31 day minimum is showing if I choose 12/29 as a checkin date, but choosing 12/27 lets me book for only a few days as is my typical minimum.
Is there any other way to create a rule that accomplishes what I’m trying to do? The only thing I can think to do is block the days of the second room when the first is rented, but then it will eliminate potential 31 day reservations during the same time.
@askme Can you elaborate what you mean by this? Is this a function that is usually available? I spoke to AirBnB customer service and they confirmed that my custom rule is only in effect if the check in date is within one of the days I chose, and that there’s not a way to create a rule to change the minimum for a stay that includes any of those days but starts before the date range in the rule. They suggested I change the whole listing to 31 day minimum, but that will cut out a large part of my business, so I may have to just block days when the other room is booked.
If you can’t have anyone staying in the other unit at all during that time (e.g. no overlap) then blocking those dates is the way to do it.
I use rules extensively but sometimes you just have to block. This is because a lot of rules are by day of the week and not date. There are some ways to do it with rules but it highly depends on the other booked days of your calendar (which I’m not privy to). I really think just blocking the dates makes sense in this case.
I have a monthly direct-booked guest in one of my units and have just blocked her 4-days every month and haven’t noticed any issues from having the days blocked. I believe the algorithm operates on overall availability and having a date unbookable is the same as blocked. If you look in the code under the development tools, you’ll see there isn’t any differentiation. Availability is availability. Unavailability is unavailability. I’m no longer convinced that actual “blocking” is read any differently by the program. FWIW.
That’s interesting to know and slightly reassuring as I was hesitant to block days and risk falling in the algorithm. I was hoping to leave the other room open, because the city is only regulating short term rentals and I can have both a short term and a longer(31+ days) rental simultaneously. It sounds like the Airbnb programming is not set up to handle the type of rule set I need. Summer is typically when I get the longer bookings (summer interns), so I’ll have to figure out another solution around that time, as blocking even 1-2 days could eliminate any potential longer bookings.
